Keith Ballard talks with school board members.
Tulsa World file
Tulsa Public Schools received its accreditation under probation Thursday because it has schools on the state's needs-improvements list.
It's the lowest level of accreditation offered by the state school board. Oklahoma City and one other district are in the same category.
We had a good story about it in today's paper, but left out one key element.
If a school district loses its accreditation it isn't eligible for state funding. Without state funding, any Oklahoma school district would pretty much go bankrupt immediately. In other words, accreditation matters.
For the same reason it's practically unimaginable that the state school board would take away the district's accreditation – it's the big hammer that practically never gets taken out of the tool box, except in the case of exceptionally troubled, tiny school districts with no political clout.
So, does accreditation under probation (or the less severe accreditation with warning, which was received by 34 districts) mean anything to a school district the size of Tulsa or Oklahoma City?
Yes, it does.
It represents the state board of education using its position to tell the people of Tulsa and Oklahoma City that there are troubling issues in their public schools, and there are.
That's not news, but the public embarrassment is valuable.
Perhaps it will spur action.
Here's an interesting contrast. Nineteen years ago, I was a reporter at the World's state capitol bureau and one of the agencies I covered was the state school board.
In those heady reform days immediately after the passage of House Bill 1017 the state school board took what was then an aggressive step. It granted Tulsa schools only probationary accreditation because of continually bad standardized test scores (at pretty much the same schools currently pulling the district down today).
The TPS superintendent at the time dismissed the move as finger pointing and complained about the testing process. The Tulsa school board president essentially dared the state board to take away accreditation, saying, "That would be a brave move by the State Board of Education."
Nearly two decades later we have the same results from the same schools leading to the same empty threat, but read this comment offered recently by Tulsa Superintendent Keith Ballard, "I'm not going to sugarcoat this: We have significant achievement gap issues, graduation rate problems, and difficulties with preparing kids for college. This school district is ripe for improvements."
Amen to that.
The first step in reforming a problem is admitting your have a problem.
